Taking Five

With the aid of technology and the enthusiastic participation of students and teachers, Chaplain Brian Griffen builds community through weekly Five-Minute Chapels With visitors to Trinity highly restricted this year, Brian Griffen was forced to throw his carefully crafted Chapel playbook out the window. Looking back on the previous spring’s virtual Morning Meetings and Chapels, Griffin anticipated that he would need to be creating a lot more video this year. “I am not a tech savvy person and had very minimal knowledge of how to create videos on iMovie going into this school year,” admitted Griffen. “I must say that my videos have improved in terms of quality over the course of the year.” Building on the success of his springtime weekly Five-Minute Chapels, Griffen devised a schedule that would allow student participation, touch on a broad array of topics and visually engage the audience. Griffen intentionally chose to begin the year with a Five-Minute Chapel series from Micah, an Old Testament prophet, who sums up God’s divine charge to mortals: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly. “In this series, I shared that in the midst of this pandemic and our national struggle with racial injustice, we must find ways in our daily lives to practice restorative justice, to be kind to one another, and to practice humility,” he said. “We should make our existence less about our needs and more about the needs of others. If we do this then we create a community where everyone feels cared for and included on our campus.” Many student organizations have also created digital versions of their traditional annual chapels. The Honor Committee created two Five-Minute Chapels educating our community on the pillars of the Honor Code. Perrin Gilman ’22, shared on the value of honesty and how it’s important to her as a tennis player to always tell the truth when calling balls ‘in’ or ‘out.’ She provided voice over narration while she filmed herself playing tennis. Students like Ella Browder-Jones ’21 shared ways that they had given back through community service over the summer. Kiera Fisher ’21 created an informative and authentic video on recycling for her Chapel on stewardship. In February, in honor of Black History Month, the Black Alliance Initiative sponsored a chapel entitled “Our Hairstory,” in which Seylon Duncan ’24 shared the story of African-American oppression and expression through exploring African-American hairstyle. Another Black Alliance Initiative chapel focused on “Black History and Music.”

“I have been encouraged by every student who has contributed to Five-Minute Chapel!” said Griffen. “From honor to service, from environmentalism to Black history, our students have shared causes that they are passionate about in unique and authentic ways. I have also been encouraged by my colleagues who look forward to the series each week and appreciate that we continue to affirm our Episicopal identity and our community values even though we can’t do that in a large chapel gathering like we used to.”